


to see if anything walks away

by Capitola



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bathing/Washing, Community: criticalkink, Gang Rape, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Messy, Multi, Prompt Fill, Public Sex, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Stocks, Tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 14:27:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30006264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capitola/pseuds/Capitola
Summary: From a prompt on the kinkmeme:"Essek is found out. In the Dynasty, traitors are left in stocks at the mercy of the public before execution."
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast, Essek Thelyss/Other(s), Fjord/Essek Thelyss
Comments: 2
Kudos: 63





	to see if anything walks away

**Author's Note:**

> Another day, another kinkmeme fill. Title from "Driving, Not Washing" by Richard Siken.

The first to take a turn with Essek are the guards who bring him out to the stocks. He’s still in the clothes he was wearing when he was arrested, save his mantle and his shoes and socks, and the grit of the packed earth feels particularly harsh on his bare feet. They lock his head and hands in place and the one who has taken his position behind Essek pulls Essek’s trousers down, just enough to leave his ass exposed. He enters Essek with two spit-slick fingers, and crows at what he finds.

“He’s already ripe for the taking. Must be used to getting fucked on the regular.”

“Funny, I always thought he was more of a lonely type,” says the other, undoing her own trousers and pulling them down enough to shove Essek’s face into the wiry hair of her crotch. Her guess is the correct one, it has been some time since hands that were not his own have touched his body like this.

“Maybe he gave his ass to the Empire too.” He withdraws his fingers and quickly replaces them with the blunt head of his cock, gripping Essek’s hips harshly as he thrusts into him. Essek reduces his reaction to a single small gasp, not a yelp or a whine. He’s under no illusions about his ability to maintain this state; he’s seen plenty of people go to the stocks believing they’ll be able to retain their composure, to grit their teeth through this, and all of them are reduced to sobbing, wrecked messes by the end. But that’s no reason to not hold onto himself for as long as he can. 

The other guard laughs. “This would serve him right, then. Bringing back to the Dynasty what’s ours.” She grips Essek’s chin sharply, her nails digging into his jaw. “Go on and _lick_ , traitor.”

Essek obeys, though the angle hurts his neck, which is to say nothing of the pain in his ass and legs from the guard fucking away at him. Tears begin to well up in his eyes and he licks, and sucks, and tries to send his mind as far away from his body as he can. Her hand twists in his hair, pressing his face against her so firmly that he begins to feel short of breath. He gives a wheezing gasp when she pulls him off of her, desperate for a little bit of air, but the relief is short-lived. She grinds even harder into his face, filling his senses with the taste of her as she brings herself off against him. 

It’s around this time that he becomes aware his own body is working against him, that his cock, dangling helplessly in the air, has grown hard. Already the building arousal in it feels painful, and he knows it will only get worse. 

Someone else is quick to take her place at his head. There’s already a crowd drawing up, eager to watch or take their turn with him, but he keeps his gaze low, not wishing to know if he will recognize anyone present. He sees hands undoing trousers, exposing a purple, slender cock at half-mast before it is unceremoniously shoved into his throat. He gags and sputters and his eyes spill over, tears running down his cheeks, but whoever has their cock in his mouth barely seems to notice, continuing to fuck his face with a hand gripping his hair.

The guard, who has been pounding away at his ass all this time, finally finishes, and he gives Essek’s thigh one last smack as he pulls out, hard enough that Essek’s legs nearly give out. “All yours,” he says, addressing the onlookers, and Essek feels somebody come up behind him. 

Cocks two and three and four blend into each other, though each time there is a little less resistance as they fuck into him, a little more numbness in Essek’s body. Spend drips down from his hole down his thighs, and the feeling would be enough to make him shudder if he weren’t overwhelmed by all these other unpleasant sensations. His trousers slide down further and further until someone pulls them off entirely to spread his legs wide, leaving his feet slipping in the dirt. The first few times someone finishes in his mouth he manages to swallow it, but his throat gets drier and sorer the longer it gets fucked, and spend begins to dribble down his chin. 

A big, rough hand clasps his hip, the fingers ending in claws, and then a much thicker cock than the drow he’s taken so far presses against his hole. _An orc_ , Essek thinks, and then he does yelp in a most undignified fashion when this new cock pushes into him. It feels like he’s getting punched in the guts each time they thrust into him, their cock feels almost as long as his forearm. His feet leave the ground without warning as his back half is hoisted up into the air, his legs gripped in the orc’s powerful hands. 

Essek has never felt like so much of a stranger to his own body than in the moment where he feels himself come with the orc’s cock pounding away inside of him, spending in the dirt like a rutting beast. There is no euphoria, no release, just a tipping over from painful stimulation to painful _over_ stimulation, the bodies at his mouth and at his backside still working away, still expecting him to perform his service like a lifeless tool.

Essek really loses track, after that. Stops counting the ways that he’s insulted and penetrated and violated, losing himself in the ache of his jaw and his throat and his ass, feeling so limp and lifeless that he doubts it would be all that noticeable if he really did asphyxiate. Time stretches and condenses to the point of meaninglessness, and the only way he knows it is moving at all is that his suffering increases.

His first indication that something is different comes when a new hand rests on his thigh and Essek feels the unmistakable course of healing magic through his body, the soreness not disappearing but greatly lessened. It brings with it too an awareness of sensations he’d been ignoring in favor of pain, and he discovers anew how disgustingly full of come his ass has become. His shirt is plastered to his back with come and sweat, not to mention torn and probably bloody from a few people digging their claws into him. Whoever the hand belongs to lingers a moment, enough that someone berates them for taking too long, but then Essek feels them steady both hands on his hips and push a cock against his entrance. The cock they’re fucking him with is long, and thick, but remains more half-mast than fully hard. 

The second indication comes when someone tips a waterskin into Essek’s mouth, and he sputters messily before he’s able to choke some of it down. This, too, is met with some derision from the crowd.

“No need to _spoil_ a prisoner like that,” says a voice in a well-bred accent.

“I am doing it for _myself_ ,” says the owner of the waterskin, in a voice that sounds almost familiar and just a trace unnatural. Essek brings himself to look up at them, finding a renewed strength in his neck to do so, and though at first he sees a face that may have been one in a thousand Rosohanan Drow, the blue eyes are very familiar. One of them twitches in a gesture that might have been a wink. 

Caleb grips Essek’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, fingers just barely trembling, before pressing his cock to Essek’s lips. 

Essek, his head swimming suddenly with hopes he is trying his best to quell, opens his mouth for him obligingly. Caleb fucks into it purposefully, his cock sliding back and forth across Essek’s barely-moistened tongue.

Perhaps he is simply delirious, pushed so far around the bend that he is seeing his friends when they are not there. Perhaps Caleb is only here to make sure he has a hand in the punishment Essek suffers. Perhaps — 

The stocks suddenly click open, the enchantment holding them in place dispelled.

“ _Now!_ ” Caleb says, pulling out of Essek’s mouth, and the person behind Essek pulls out of his ass and lifts him up like a doll. There is a familiar flash of teleport, and suddenly the three of them are somewhere else.

Essek does not recognize their new surroundings, but daylight streams in through the streaked windows, which means they are at least far from Rosohna. It looks to be some sort of plain bedroom, perhaps in an inn.

“Can you stand?” asks the figure holding him — Fjord, Essek realizes, Fjord was the one who had healed him back there. Essek thinks for a moment, searching for a surety and a strength in his legs that he does not find, and then shakes his head. “Can I set you down?” Essek nods. 

The floorboards are clean and polished, and it only makes Essek more aware of just how filthy he is, covered in dirt and sweat and come. He can hardly bear to look down at himself. He sits listlessly, watching as Caleb and Fjord put their clothes to rights and undo their disguises, as Caleb begins casting something and Fjord paces back and forth, casting nervous glances toward Essek.

“We’re fine, Jess,” Fjord says, suddenly, counting with his fingers as he replies to a Sending. “We got him out. He’s alive. We’re back at the meeting place.” He turns to Caleb. “They got out, they’re on their way here. I can wait for them, if you want to…” He makes a vague gesture towards Essek, Caleb, and the door Caleb has just finished conjuring.

Caleb nods, doffing his coat and squatting down to place it on Essek’s shoulders. Essek holds it to himself with clumsy fingers. “Can you walk if I support you?” Caleb asks, and Essek nods. 

It’s slow and awkward with their differences in height and his legs feel like jelly and his feet hurt worse than he would like to let on, but they manage it. Caleb guides Essek through a lush foyer and hallway, to rooms that are thankfully at the base of what appears to be a very tall tower. He is certain he’d find all of it worth more than a passing glance in any other moment but this one. Past a bedroom is a bathroom, where a steaming bath piled high with fragrant bubbles is already drawn, and Essek manages to hold out until he can catch himself on the rim of the tub before allowing his legs to give out again. With Caleb’s help, he shrugs off the coat onto the floor and climbs into the bath with his ruined shirt still on. 

“I can give you some privacy —” Caleb starts, turning away as though Essek’s modesty could still be at play here.

“No,” Essek starts to say, and then coughs, trying to assuage some of the damage to his throat that he can hear in his voice. Caleb offers him his waterskin again, which Essek readily accepts. “I would rather not be alone,” he manages to add, after a long swallow of water. His voice still comes out thin and with more than a bit of a rasp, but it will do.

Caleb nods, and sinks down onto the tiled floor, his back against the side of the tub. “Are you worried you might drown yourself?” He turns his gaze enough so that he could see if Essek were to only nod or shake his head.

It is an unnervingly comfortable idea, now that Caleb mentions it. “A little.”

“I would rather you did not, though I can understand the feeling.” A pause follows, where neither of them say anything, where Essek contemplates removing his shirt or reaching for one of the many colorful soaps and shampoos set in a niche in the wall next to the tub. He does neither, just remains still in the water, breathing and willing the water to wash away the last several hours of his life, or perhaps the last decade.

“I am sorry that we — we could not think of another way to get that close to you,” Caleb says, his face not quite turned towards Essek. “We thought we had more time to get you out. When we realized — we had to improvise a bit.”

“Were you all in the crowd?” Essek says, suddenly aware that he will spend the rest of his life not knowing who of his acquaintance was in attendance.

“The others were a ways off — in case things went wrong.” Caleb turns so that he is sitting parallel to Essek, looking him in the face. “They knew but they did not see.”

“None of you should have been there.” The words spill from Essek’s lips as soon as they cross his mind. “My _life_ is not worth a fraction of one of yours, let alone my dignity —” 

“We would obviously beg to differ.” Caleb’s tone is calm but stretched tight, as though he is borrowing patience on credit. “Your choices were your own. Our choices are our own. If we had left you there an hour longer, would you have felt any better about escaping?”

“I do not regret being freed. I regret that it was you who had to do it.”

“Well, we did. And the world continues.” Caleb props an elbow on the side of the tub, resting his head in his hand. “Do you want my help getting that shirt off?”

“Yes, please.” Essek has regained enough of himself that he can feel individual things that are bothering him again, and the shirt is high on the list. Gooseflesh follows where Caleb’s fingers pull the wet fabric from his skin, but it is some relief when the shirt is off and he is merely naked instead of half-stripped. Naked he might be in this bath for no reason other than relaxation, without fresh traumas to wash away.

Caleb examines the wet garment gingerly. “I am not sure it can be saved —” 

“You can burn it if you like.” Essek splashes water over his face, relishing in the feeling. 

Caleb balls it up and tosses it to the side. “May I wash your hair?”

“Yes.” Essek lies back, submerging his hair and then resting his head along the side of the tub and sinking down into the water up to his chin. Caleb reaches over him for one of the bottles, and soon begins massaging a shampoo with a heady lavender scent into Essek’s hair. His hands are firm but gentle, methodically covering every part of Essek’s scalp in soothing touches. He’s slow and careful as he tips Essek back into the water, submerging him for only a moment before bringing him back up, fresher, a little more steady.

The ache in his legs start to give way to the bruises he'll feel later with that traitorously pleasant feeling normally associated with a job well done. There will be more healing, he knows, if he wants it, when he is ready to face all of them once again. When he is ready to submit to that initial wave of pity that they won’t know how to stem. 

For a moment when Caleb smooths his hair back, Essek’s scalp stings where his hair was pulled, and pushing that to the back of his mind reminds him of that barber he only kept going to because no one else could get the back just right. Not for the first time, Essek wonders how many people he is never going to see again, and hanging onto that is the even uglier little thought of _how many people will have seen me for the last time in those stocks._ Had the barber thought of his own hands in Essek's hair when that woman gripped his handiwork and thrust his customer into her nethers until she came all over that mouth, bereft of its knowing smirk? People he had worked for, people who had worked for him, people whose services he had come to rely on — all of it gone.

Caleb's hand on his cheek steadies him, shushing the worry before it can take root, and the day starts to feel more like a bad dream. Perhaps that's all it is. Perhaps he'll wake in a moment, warm in bed with this human who loves him, who genuinely loves him, and they'll laugh at the stain in the sheets where this whole awful evening had manifested in Essek spilling between them.

Exhausted and wishing or hoping or dreaming for a softer morning, Caleb’s hands holding him steady, Essek drifts off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very grateful once again for the encouragement and ideas of [asterCrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asterCrash/pseuds/asterCrash) and [flammablehat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flammablehat). 
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated <3 You can find me on [tumblr](https://capitola.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/knitinerant), as well as in the [Haven](https://discord.gg/mfDbzMuK) Discord.


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